Free will versus fate
An LJ friend of mine just asked a question that got me wanting to rant about fate and free will. Like many of my rants, I get a bit wander-y.
I would also like to point out that these views are mine alone, and I neither ask nor suggest that anybody else adopt them in whole or in part. My intent is solely to share my fascination.
I've never really had anything totally disastrous take place close enough to my life to give up believing that everything happens for a reason. I've had plenty of tragedies that I have no hope of truly understanding how they fit into divine harmony, and were very painful - but I've had plenty of chances to perceive a tiny bit of how events come together in a grand story, and my belief is that harmony at a high level ascends from harmony at a low level.
In short, everything - *everything* - happens for a reason.
The nature of those reasons, however, I believe to be unfathomable. Little glimpses might (and do) come together now and again, but there's a difference between the illusion of understanding, and true understanding. I'm of the mind that all we tiny little humans ever get is the former. Even my aforementioned little glimpses are hardly what I'd call enlightenment. The only reason I don't dismiss them as coincidence is that there's been too many of them, and they've been too unlikely to chalk up to chance. I think that the infinite possibilities present in life are far too broad for so many patterns to emerge in the ways that they do out of pure random chaos. And, while there are certainly gray areas between perfect order and perfect chaos, I believe that order rules the cosmos on its most grand scale.
That said, I do also believe in free will, which is a chaos principle, and here's where being a computer scientist becomes relevant.
Computer science is something of a combination between mathematics and systems science. Mathematics explains that all systems are determinant, that there is a single, calculable and predictable outcome to everything, even to life and the universe itself. We might not be able to perform the necessary calculations to come up with the answer to it all, but the faith of mathematics is that such a calculation exists, and its work is in finding it. (This is the part where the mathematicians reading this start typing furious comments that I've attached the F-word to their discipline, but bear with me.)
The systems science side of computer science, on the other hand, reveals that grand patterns emerge from simpler intelligences: sub-prime awarenesses simply going about their activities as best they know how, and eventually arriving at the ultimate conclusion of the system, whatever that's been designed to be. This principle transcends computer science even on a physical level, and provides the foundation of my understanding of the cosmos.
For instance, transistors in a CPU whisk voltage along based on their design; despite their ignorance of the pattern they weave together, they form the core of all the possibilities a personal computer provides. Going up a level, the CPU speaks to its attached devices in a language that they share but don't know why or how, and things like operating systems and eventually personal blogging sites are created.
Despite its critical role in creating a tool that some people use to share ideas and creativity with one another across the entire world, the transistor knows nothing of where it fits into the scheme. If it notices anything (staying out of the realm of inanimate consciousness and the nature of information), it might notice that it sees a lot of the same pattern of current every now and again, but any pattern it might notice would be a proverbial grain of sand in the desert.
This is my chosen metaphor for the entire cosmos. The difference - if there is one - is that as human beings, our experience of the cosmos is more complex than can be described even in terms of the most complex computer (I don't care what the consciousness scientists say). Our role in fulfilling the creation of an ultimate divine pattern is simultaneously determinant and not. In some ways, we have free will, and act out of it much of the time. But always, we move unerringly toward our place in the grand story, a story so grand that our tiny consciousnesses could never hope to fathom any part of it, like the transistor trying to fathom a social networking website.
An example of how these two things might work is to imagine a person in a room with many corridors connecting to it. Suppose these corridors form a twisted, labyrinthine network of passageways and tunnels, but there is only one door among them.
In such a situation, the person retains their free will, their choice. They can choose to seek out the door directly and walk through it; they can choose to admire the architecture of the corridors; they can take a nap; they can get themselves good and lost in the labyrinth and amuse themselves by finding their way back out. They can do whatever they choose within such a place - but sooner or later, they're going through that door.
The simplest and easiest parallel to this metaphor is the ultimate destiny of all living things: Death. But since I find death itself to be a constant presence in all systems (i.e. change and impermanence), that means that there are many doors hidden behind labyrinths of corridors that I will find throughout my existence, whatever I choose that to mean. My existence, then, becomes a set of waypoints, the paths between which are up to me to decide.
But if death is so totally transcendent - which I believe it is - then that implies that those waypoints, those doors hidden in the mazes, are constant presences. Not only is my passage through the door an ultimate destiny - every footstep I take through the corridors is, as well. (This is where I bet the mathematicians I pissed off earlier are saying "haHAAA!")
But, well, frankly, I don't dispute it. (Nyeah.) Electrons, molecules, cells, neurotransmitters - my entire being is calculable. But the determinant nature of the universe isn't important. (Back to fury. Sorry, folks.) Why not? Because my essential reality includes myself as a whole entity within that reality, and not as a construct of less complex systems - and, as far as I know, so does everybody else.
Physical senses and memory - to wit, the accumulation of experience - makes anything else impossible. And if it's impossible - why not simply accept it as part of the paradigm? In accepting it, it is easy to let go of the illusory nature of free will. After all, if I accept my own identity as persistent illusion, there's no harm in accepting free will as persistent illusion as well. The line between where that illusion persists and where it degrades is intuition, dividing understanding from faith, holding hands with both.
Now here's the really fun part, at least for me: Identity and choice are illusions - but they're persistent based on the nature of my existence. I have understanding of some things, and belief or intuition of others, which arise because of the transcendent nature of death in the form of change and impermanence. If that is so, then that means that the less complex systems that make up my identity - the cells in my body, for instance - have a similar experience on a less complex scale, meaning that I'm outside the realm of their understanding. That means that my existence is a grand system that those cells make up. But if death is transcendent in both directions, which I believe it is (such as a social organization that ceases to exist) - then that means that the pattern travels in both directions. The emergence of my identity from less complex systems, thus, is direct evidence of a greater system than myself, which I am a part of... and that system is part of another greater still... and so on.
It is at this point in my musings that I promptly cease bothering to wonder how it all comes together. My search for the meaning of life thus begins and ends with knowing I've got corridors to wander and doors to walk through, and that I'll do it all on my own time, under my own free will, and that fate will carry on its harmony because of it.
Bless you if you read this far; I do hope you found it entertaining for a little while!
I would also like to point out that these views are mine alone, and I neither ask nor suggest that anybody else adopt them in whole or in part. My intent is solely to share my fascination.
I've never really had anything totally disastrous take place close enough to my life to give up believing that everything happens for a reason. I've had plenty of tragedies that I have no hope of truly understanding how they fit into divine harmony, and were very painful - but I've had plenty of chances to perceive a tiny bit of how events come together in a grand story, and my belief is that harmony at a high level ascends from harmony at a low level.
In short, everything - *everything* - happens for a reason.
The nature of those reasons, however, I believe to be unfathomable. Little glimpses might (and do) come together now and again, but there's a difference between the illusion of understanding, and true understanding. I'm of the mind that all we tiny little humans ever get is the former. Even my aforementioned little glimpses are hardly what I'd call enlightenment. The only reason I don't dismiss them as coincidence is that there's been too many of them, and they've been too unlikely to chalk up to chance. I think that the infinite possibilities present in life are far too broad for so many patterns to emerge in the ways that they do out of pure random chaos. And, while there are certainly gray areas between perfect order and perfect chaos, I believe that order rules the cosmos on its most grand scale.
That said, I do also believe in free will, which is a chaos principle, and here's where being a computer scientist becomes relevant.
Computer science is something of a combination between mathematics and systems science. Mathematics explains that all systems are determinant, that there is a single, calculable and predictable outcome to everything, even to life and the universe itself. We might not be able to perform the necessary calculations to come up with the answer to it all, but the faith of mathematics is that such a calculation exists, and its work is in finding it. (This is the part where the mathematicians reading this start typing furious comments that I've attached the F-word to their discipline, but bear with me.)
The systems science side of computer science, on the other hand, reveals that grand patterns emerge from simpler intelligences: sub-prime awarenesses simply going about their activities as best they know how, and eventually arriving at the ultimate conclusion of the system, whatever that's been designed to be. This principle transcends computer science even on a physical level, and provides the foundation of my understanding of the cosmos.
For instance, transistors in a CPU whisk voltage along based on their design; despite their ignorance of the pattern they weave together, they form the core of all the possibilities a personal computer provides. Going up a level, the CPU speaks to its attached devices in a language that they share but don't know why or how, and things like operating systems and eventually personal blogging sites are created.
Despite its critical role in creating a tool that some people use to share ideas and creativity with one another across the entire world, the transistor knows nothing of where it fits into the scheme. If it notices anything (staying out of the realm of inanimate consciousness and the nature of information), it might notice that it sees a lot of the same pattern of current every now and again, but any pattern it might notice would be a proverbial grain of sand in the desert.
This is my chosen metaphor for the entire cosmos. The difference - if there is one - is that as human beings, our experience of the cosmos is more complex than can be described even in terms of the most complex computer (I don't care what the consciousness scientists say). Our role in fulfilling the creation of an ultimate divine pattern is simultaneously determinant and not. In some ways, we have free will, and act out of it much of the time. But always, we move unerringly toward our place in the grand story, a story so grand that our tiny consciousnesses could never hope to fathom any part of it, like the transistor trying to fathom a social networking website.
An example of how these two things might work is to imagine a person in a room with many corridors connecting to it. Suppose these corridors form a twisted, labyrinthine network of passageways and tunnels, but there is only one door among them.
In such a situation, the person retains their free will, their choice. They can choose to seek out the door directly and walk through it; they can choose to admire the architecture of the corridors; they can take a nap; they can get themselves good and lost in the labyrinth and amuse themselves by finding their way back out. They can do whatever they choose within such a place - but sooner or later, they're going through that door.
The simplest and easiest parallel to this metaphor is the ultimate destiny of all living things: Death. But since I find death itself to be a constant presence in all systems (i.e. change and impermanence), that means that there are many doors hidden behind labyrinths of corridors that I will find throughout my existence, whatever I choose that to mean. My existence, then, becomes a set of waypoints, the paths between which are up to me to decide.
But if death is so totally transcendent - which I believe it is - then that implies that those waypoints, those doors hidden in the mazes, are constant presences. Not only is my passage through the door an ultimate destiny - every footstep I take through the corridors is, as well. (This is where I bet the mathematicians I pissed off earlier are saying "haHAAA!")
But, well, frankly, I don't dispute it. (Nyeah.) Electrons, molecules, cells, neurotransmitters - my entire being is calculable. But the determinant nature of the universe isn't important. (Back to fury. Sorry, folks.) Why not? Because my essential reality includes myself as a whole entity within that reality, and not as a construct of less complex systems - and, as far as I know, so does everybody else.
Physical senses and memory - to wit, the accumulation of experience - makes anything else impossible. And if it's impossible - why not simply accept it as part of the paradigm? In accepting it, it is easy to let go of the illusory nature of free will. After all, if I accept my own identity as persistent illusion, there's no harm in accepting free will as persistent illusion as well. The line between where that illusion persists and where it degrades is intuition, dividing understanding from faith, holding hands with both.
Now here's the really fun part, at least for me: Identity and choice are illusions - but they're persistent based on the nature of my existence. I have understanding of some things, and belief or intuition of others, which arise because of the transcendent nature of death in the form of change and impermanence. If that is so, then that means that the less complex systems that make up my identity - the cells in my body, for instance - have a similar experience on a less complex scale, meaning that I'm outside the realm of their understanding. That means that my existence is a grand system that those cells make up. But if death is transcendent in both directions, which I believe it is (such as a social organization that ceases to exist) - then that means that the pattern travels in both directions. The emergence of my identity from less complex systems, thus, is direct evidence of a greater system than myself, which I am a part of... and that system is part of another greater still... and so on.
It is at this point in my musings that I promptly cease bothering to wonder how it all comes together. My search for the meaning of life thus begins and ends with knowing I've got corridors to wander and doors to walk through, and that I'll do it all on my own time, under my own free will, and that fate will carry on its harmony because of it.
Bless you if you read this far; I do hope you found it entertaining for a little while!